


here & there

by quadrille



Category: Everworld Series - K. A. Applegate
Genre: Bonding, Character Study, Developing Relationship, Friendship, Gen, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Religion, Series Spoilers, Teenagers, Yuletide, Yuletide 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 18:21:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13059549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quadrille/pseuds/quadrille
Summary: Her hand touched his elbow, gently; Jalil glanced down to where her fingers splayed against his skin and she withdrew almost as if scalded. For some reason, his abashed humility threw her so much more than Christopher’s swaggering flirtation did.





	here & there

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Floranna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Floranna/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! This is such an under-loved fandom -- and Jalil/April such an under-served part of it -- that I'm always pleased to see people requesting this. :')

**HERE.**

Egypt — or at least Everworld’s version of Egypt — was a dead place, filled with a musty staleness that seeped into your sinuses and lodged in your throat, and April kept wondering if she could taste the dust and decay on her tongue. She wondered if Jalil was bothered by it, too. He was hunkered down in front of the fire in their quarters, staring thoughtfully into the flames; the other two boys had been whisked away, claimed by their respective witch and Amazon for the night.

“‘This one’s mine’,” Jalil finally repeated, with a self-deprecating laugh.

April looked up, jolted. She’d almost hoped they could disregard and move past the way she’d latched onto him, the embarrassment of having claimed he was hers. “Um. Sorry about that.”

“I mean, I get it. You picked me because I’m safe. I’m also the only guy in the group who hasn’t screwed your sister.” He shrugged his narrow shoulders.

“No, that’s not…” April trailed off, struggling to figure out exactly how to phrase this. Her hand touched his elbow, gently; Jalil glanced down to where her fingers splayed against his skin and she withdrew almost as if scalded. For some reason, his abashed humility threw her so much more than Christopher’s swaggering flirtation did.

“That’s not it,” she finally said. “I mean, yeah, you’re safe, but that’s because I _trust you_ , Jalil. You’re a good guy, you’ve got your head on straight, and you’ve always got my back. Even if we’re, like, polar opposites in every other way that counts.”

There was a pause, a self-conscious beat. Jalil suddenly cleared his throat and changed the subject: “Speaking of, I’ve been wondering something.”

“Yes?”

“Do you think we might run into the big guy here? Jesus Christ, I mean. What would that do to your faith, if you came face-to-face with him? We’ve been meeting all these other gods that people used to worship and revere, so surely Christianity can’t be all that different either.” The question had the sound of a thought experiment to it, a controversial theory that Jalil had been mulling over for a while and was finally voicing.

She had to stop to consider it.

“I’d… I mean, it’ll be a shock, but I hope that I’d be fine. Because it’s not really him. Just like how Galahad might have been a real man once, but now his identity’s all muddled. It’s just… one version. A copy of the real thing, built more out of what people think about them. Basically, I take everything here with a grain of salt.”

He half-smiled at her. “Careful, April. You’re starting to sound like me.”

“There are worse things. Imagine if I started turning into Christopher?”

“Please god, _no_.”

They laughed, and the sound echoed strangely in the hollowed-out pyramid, made them sound tiny and small and insignificant — but at least it was laughter and at least that was a comfort.

  


* * *

**OVER THERE.**

It had been an unspoken rule at first that they didn’t spend any time together in the ‘real’ world — they weren’t friends, after all, and they saw enough of each other in Everworld. Whenever April woke up warm and safe and well-fed in her own bed, she was desperate to hang onto that normalcy as long as she could. Some time away from hunger and horror. Avoiding the reminders of Everworld. The boys’ faces looked odd and unnatural out-of-context, in a real-life setting where they somehow didn’t belong.

But then they started seeking each other out more and more: there were hurried conversations in hushed voices by a locker, demanding the latest update; or April marching Christopher into the girl’s bathroom to grill him; or the whole group convening in a Starbucks to discuss what had happened and what library research they needed to do next, Jalil barely touching the chai latte by his elbow.

And then after those meetings — ‘talking shop’, as they called it — they started just enjoying each others’ company. Spending time together even when they didn’t have to. Discussing their normal lives, ribbing each other, teasing with the familiarity grown from having spent weeks together on the road and weathering life-threatening situations together. “You’ve been hanging out with those guys a lot,” Magda said once, and April felt like she’d been caught cheating.

After getting off the phone with Christopher, Jalil hung up and wondered how in the world his best friends were now a big blond racist asshole, and a redhead with the brightest laugh. And when he showed up at the ticket booth later that night to attend one of April’s plays, he was surprised to realise that both Christopher and David had had the same exact idea.

“I didn’t think you guys knew about her show,” he said; glad to see them, oddly jealous that he wasn’t the only one there.

“Everyone knows the theatre nerds were performing tonight. They can’t stop advertising it.” Christopher, trying to sound too-cool as always. David was a little more quiet, scanning the crowd. It seemed like General Davideus Levineus was a mode he couldn’t snap out of anymore, his perpetual wariness starting to leak over to the real wrold.

April was playing Rosalind in _As You Like It_ , and she was excellent. Seated in the dark auditorium, Christopher kept nudging Jalil’s side to offer off-beat commentary (“Is it just me, or does she look really hot as an old-timey shepherd?”) and Jalil had to hush him, aggrieved.

In the middle of intermission, Jalil had to hurry to the restroom (too many Cokes) and felt a strangling panic as the line grew too long and he was one of the last to get a sink, starting to wash his hands and knowing, just knowing, that he was going to get stuck in a loop again. Seven times to wash his hands. Seven goddamn times and the sweat prickling the back of his neck, shooting nervous glances at the clock, hearing the buzz of audience chatter starting to fade, and knowing he was going to miss it, he was too late, he was stuck here, fucking trapped, and he was going to miss her performance.

“Thank you guys for coming,” April said at the stage door later. She sent a shy look at Jalil that he caught, and tried not to read too much into. “For a sec I thought Jalil had just walked out at intermission. My acting can’t be _that_ bad.”

“You were great,” he said quickly, nervously, falling over himself to apologise. “I mean, not that I’m a connoisseur on this sort of thing, it’s not really my wheelhouse, but from what I can tell, you seemed objectively good.”

“Real slick, Sherman,” Christopher said. “‘Objectively good’. Just what every girl loves to hear.”

“No, I’ll take it.” April laughed that addictive laugh of hers. “It’s like a stamp of approval. He doesn’t give those out easily.”

  


* * *

**HERE.**

They’ve gotten better at the whole camping thing, despite none of them having been the outdoorsy types before. Jalil had always been too finicky about it as a child; his parents had tried to take him fishing, but the slimy scales and wriggling bait had horrified him. He hated getting dirty, couldn’t stop obsessing over the germs waiting on every surface.

But here, in Everworld, the group of teenagers are stinking and sweaty and unwashed and somehow they’ve learnt to cope. Jalil set some fish on a flat rock above the flames, not even minding the sliminess against his bare hands, then marveling at the fact that he didn’t mind. He settled on a fallen tree trunk that they’d repurposed into a bench, letting himself warm up in front of the flames.

A rustle and then April joined him. The sleeping forms of the other boys lay right at the edge of the fire. Christopher was out like a light, but David kept tossing and turning beneath his furs.

“He has nightmares, you know,” April said. Jalil looked at her. She was always perceptive in a way that he could never be; she got people, really _got_ them, saw sharply into the things that made them tick. He envied her that. The physical world could (normally) be organised into laws and rules and order, but people and their emotions couldn’t.

“Don’t we all have nightmares?” he said, prodding at the fish.

“Yeah, but there’s something different about his.” A pause. “Mine have been worse lately too.”

“Senna.”

“Yeah.”

He’d already told April that if she hadn’t killed her sister, he would have done it — but the guilt was obviously still eating her alive. His heart twinged, and on impulse, he reached out and caught her hand. This time it was April’s turn to be surprised.

“I know it doesn’t feel like it, but you did the right thing. We’d probably all be dead if you hadn’t done it. Senna made her choice. She’d committed to it, past the point of no return. You did the _right thing_ , April.”

She exhaled a sigh. “Maybe someday I’ll believe that.”

  


* * *

**OVER THERE.**

She wasn’t actually sure when she’d started thinking of Chicago as _over there_ , but somewhere along the way, it had happened. ‘Here’ was Everworld, all fresh and immediate and visceral. It hadn’t happened after killing her sister; after driving that knife into Senna’s chest, she’d been more desperate than ever for the real world. To disappear into choir and church and rehearsal and homework and try to forget the sight of blood on her hands. She had chosen the real world, in all its bland mundaneness, in its everyday drama.

So when she started fading in Chicago, just like the boys were, it was a shock.

And it took her a while, but April finally realised it happened after she saw Jalil fading, after she talked to him and realised what he had made his choice; that he was committing to Everworld, and wouldn’t be back. That she would be the only one there, trapped alone in the real world (that felt so much less real than everything they experienced _here_ ).

So when the day came that she woke up hungry and cold next to a guttering campfire and knew in her heart of hearts that that was the last time, the last day of updates and straddling the two worlds and trying to juggle two lives, that Senna’s bridge had fallen apart and the door had slammed shut—

April looked at Jalil, and the weary smile on his face was all the reassurance she needed.

“What now?”

“We’ll figure it out,” he said. “All of us. Together.”


End file.
